Determination of Platinum, Rhodium and Palladium in automotive catalytic converters

Automotive catalytic converters contain the precious metals Platinum, Rhodium and Palladium. The exact amount of these elements is important for the recycling industry to determine scrap values.

The European Directive on End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV 2000/53/EC) has the real effect that a huge number of different automotive catalytic converters are now recycled. The value of these used catalytic converters depends on the amount of precious metals they contain, making it important for the recycling industry to be able to determine precisely the content of Platinum, Rhodium and Palladium.

In comparison to analysis using traditional chemical methods, measurement of these three elements can be performed more quickly and accurately with the FISCHERSCOPE® X-RAY XDV®-SDD equipment.

To get the best measuring results the catalyst structures are first milled and pressed into pellets. The FISCHERSCOPE® X-RAY XDV®-SDD has a programmable measuring stage, which makes it easy to analyse a large number of samples (pellets) automatically.

The powerful WinFTM® analysis software provides accurate measurements of all three precious metals by their components.

Platinum

Palladium

Rhodium

ICP-OES

XDV-SDD

ICP-OES

XDV-SDD

ICP-OES

XDV-SDD

A1

1065

1055

861

871

236

243

A2

1112

1101

747

759

212

213

A3

1004

995

785

774

201

186

A4

770

741

1335

1315

125

100

A5

856

880

850

856

194

181

A6

1158

1142

806

815

180

177

A7

1071

1089

729

756

185

186

A8

1060

1057

761

747

189

189

A9

3112

3200

2830

2789

716

700

A10

975

996

887

884

177

172

Figure 1: Comparison of XDV-SDD and chemical analysis by ICP-OES for some automotive catalytic converters. Values in mg/kg.

With its silicon drift detector (SDD), the programmable measuring stage and the powerful analysis software, WinFTM®, the FISCHERSCOPE® X-RAY XDV®-SDD is perfectly suited for the efficient, precise and convenient measurement of precious metal content in catalytic converters.